I always wanted to be a journalist. I was attracted by the
enormous power that journalists have. The power to be there, in the place where
news is made, watching a story come to life before your eyes and to have the
gratifying duty to tell that story to others. The power of being informed. Of
feeling adrenaline run through your veins, and of having something different
and exciting to tell every day. The power to make the powerful uncomfortable
and to use the word as the most effective weapon to reveal corruption. The
power to give a voice to those who are listened to the least. To hold up a
mirror to society so that it cannot deny that we are part of a reality that
cries out for change. And to not be silent.

Right now my country is going through a difficult time. The
powerful have taken over the word and have turned the right to express oneself
freely into a public service, bound and controlled by political power. The
power of the word has succumbed to the power of money. The silence in my country
has a price. People are silent because they have full pockets. The government
takes advantage of the enormous price of oil to say that we are living in a new
era. The country is full of public works that have disguised the truth:
bridges, highways, schools, hospitals, bonuses, subsidies. But the mirror will
show the truth: a truth of corrupt people who continue to steal people's
dreams, of nouveau riche that live off the government, of jails filled with
poor people who don't have the money to pay the price of justice. A democracy
with people who are conveniently silent or afraid to tell the truth is not a
democracy.

During the past six years, all of the government's resources
and propaganda apparatus have been used to paint Ecuadoran journalists as
mediocre, liars, traitors, enemies, thugs, hit men, thieves, and complicit in
human rights violations.

Many people, dazzled by state propaganda, see us that way. Today
I am part of a community with which no one wants to mix. People are afraid to
have relationships with journalists, doubt giving us information, and are
terrified of becoming targets of the state along with the rest of us.

César Ricaurte, and many more, have received constant
insults and, as a result of this, threats, for the mere fact of being
journalists, asking questions and thinking differently.

This award means a lot. It is a sign that we are not alone
and that the world is aware of what is happening to us.

As a way of thanking you for awarding it to me, I invite you
all to visit Ecuador. You will be impressed by the landscape, do not doubt
that. But I ask that if you go, that you look at the country and write about
it. Report what is happening to Ecuadorans and how one constructs a democracy
of silence and a state of propaganda.